


Belladonna

by ancallis



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29244564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancallis/pseuds/ancallis
Summary: She smiles and her gums are blue. He takes a deep breath but feels faint. Is her beauty that intoxicating? Inspired by "Poison Princess" by Mitsukazu Mihara.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 3





	1. Spoiled Milk

Her mother slipped wolfsbane under her pillow and gave her milk infused with white snakeroot as an infant. Inoichi tried to not cry as his daughter’s skin turned blotchy and she cried. “Are you sure about this, Tsubaki?” He whimpered, hugging his inconsolable baby.

His wife looked up for her book and laughed. “No child of ours will die from something as harmless as poison.”

Inoichi bit his lip. He didn’t doubt that Tsubaki knew what she was doing, as Konoha’s resident poison master, but he hated seeing his child in pain. “Is it worth turning our daughter into a living weapon?”

Tsubaki stared at him and said, “If not for me, you would be the one to do it. I’m just starting earlier.”

He went upstairs, set Ino down in her crib, and sobbed beside it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if I want to make this romantic just yet. I highly recommend checking Poison Princess by Mitsukazu Mihara! Such beautiful storytelling and artwork. One of my favorites stories.


	2. Chapter 2

Ino was forced into separate classes than the other kids in the academy. The headmaster had gotten too many complaints from parents about their children feeling sick sitting next to Ino, which he tried to write off as a coincidence (but his conscious knew otherwise). The breaking point was when a classmate ate something from her lunch and ended up in the hospital. Iruka visibly shudders when Ino smiles at him with bloodshot eyes. Her gums are blue and bleeding. 

\--

“How’s teaching Yamanaka, Iruka?” His coworker, Mizuchi, asks. 

He sighs. “She’s brilliant. I’d recommend her to graduate early, but her mother requested me not to.”

“Her mother is a fucking freak.” Mizuchi adds. “Inoichi is just as bad for going along with it.”

“She threw up her lunch today, again. For someone so young, she’s awfully good at acting like nothing’s wrong. ” Iruka's voice cracks. He can barely handle one troubled student, let alone another who regularly ingests poison.

“Jesus fucking christ.” Mizuchi produces a flask from somewhere and hands it to Iruka, who takes a swig. 

“We don’t get paid enough to deal with this shit.” Iruka mutters.

“I’ll drink to that.”


	3. Chapter 3

Shikaku and Chouza kept a sharp eye on Inoichi’s daughter as she played with their sons. She looked exhausted, something a nine year old shouldn’t be. Shikaku knew Shikamaru wasn’t dumb enough to ask why she had purple splotches on her arms and Chouza knew his son was too kind for that. Inoichi, usually the moodmaker, was quiet.

“You’re gonna get harsh criticism when you release her to the public.” Shikaku observes. 

“Did you tell the Hokage about this?” Chouza asks.

“I’m sure Tsubaki gave him an idea. She’s betting on the Clan Confidentiality Clause.” Inoichi sighs and shrinks. “Is this crazy? Poisoning my daughter on a daily basis?”  
Chouza glances at Shikaku. Neither of them really had a right to tell him if what he was doing is right. People have done worse things to their children for the sake of becoming a better ninja- just look at Fugaku. He forced his eldest son to make his first kill when he could barely walk.

“You do what you think is best for your clan and Konoha. Inoichi, how can you have survived being a shinobi this long and be so soft?” Shikaku scoffs, taking a sip of his sake.

“Children have a special way of melting even the hardest metal.” Chouza reminds him. “Daughters especially.”

The three of them sit in silence once again, watching their children.

Ino was trying to force Shikamaru to play house with her. “Shika, you have to be the dad!” She shrieked, grabbing his hand and trying to pull him. He refused to budge. She wiped the sweat off of her head. “Choji! Do something about him!”


	4. Chapter 4

When Ino graduates, she is not assigned to a team. Anko becomes her mentor and teaches her how to use her weaponized body. When her arm is snapped by Anko’s snakes, she coats her kunai in her own toxic blood. A snake sinks its fangs into her belly and Ino laughs, knowing it will die. She keeps the fangs as a memento and turns them into daggers. Anko teaches her to live when she knows she should be dead. She is hard on her, but Ino knows that it’s because Anko _cares_ about her that she is so rough. A soft teacher creates a soft student who is dead before they even walk out Konoha’s doors.

\--

“Get up, bitch.” Anko hisses at her. Ino feels like most of her bones are broken already. “Get up and _live_. You’re not fucking dead yet.”

Ino stands up and wipes her eyes. Anko surprised her in the middle of the night with a kunai to her neck before binding her, dislocating Ino’s left shoulder in the process, and dragging her to some unknown location. Since then, she’s been fighting tooth and nail against her. Her poison hasn’t creeped in on Anko, not yet. Ino has learned it takes a lot of her own blood and hours for Anko to feel the pain.

Ino holds her snake fang daggers defensively. She physically cannot do anything else. Anko rushes her, unleashing a neverending assault on her left side, her weaker side. Ino dodges as best as she can, spitting in Anko’s eyes in an attempt to blind her (she learned early on that fighting pretty is a quick way to get killed). It works. She darts back and Ino throws the last of her ninja tools, a smoke bomb laced with ricin. She runs away from Anko as quickly as she can. Better a coward than dead, Anko drilled into her head. Ino knows she cannot win and this is her only option. She cannot see the smoke anymore but Ino keeps running. Just run, and run, and run.

\--

The hospital nurses have no idea what to think when Ino is brought in unconscious by Anko, who has her own fair share of injuries.

“I’ve been severely poisoned and she has broken almost every bone in her body, I think.” She announces to everyone in the waiting room. “We probably need some help.”

One of the nurses faints.

\--

When Ino wakes up from her medically induced coma, Anko is sitting next to her. “Took your sweet time waking up, poison princess.” She teases, before handing her two scrolls, one with a blue seal and the other with purple. “Open the blue scroll first. We’ll open the purple one later.”

Ino nods. When she breaks the seal and greedily reads the words, she throws her arms around Anko and squeals. Anko hugs her back fiercely. “The Hokage has deemed you chunin, Ino. Congratulations.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at some point I'll write directly about Ino, our main character. for now, we're just understanding and learning about her past.


	5. Chapter 5

He hadn’t seen much of Ino after graduation. They were childhood friends, more forced than anything, but it didn’t mean he despised her. Just thought she was more troublesome than most. She troubled him a lot. Shikamaru rolls onto his side. He had napped too much during the day and couldn’t get to sleep when he was supposed to. It wasn’t often, but he had nights when he couldn’t sleep and just thought. Tonight, he was thinking about Ino. 

Shikamaru didn’t know much about her, to be blunt. He assumed her frequent illnesses were due to her mother, the resident poison specialist, doing something with poison and Ino. Probably trying to make her immune to poison. Yet, that didn’t explain her taking separate courses than everyone else and getting her own teacher. He’d say it wasn’t fair for her to get one-on-one instruction, but there was something her mother was doing to her that required it. It frustrated him. He had these pieces, but they didn’t fit together. He was missing something. He cracked his knuckles, annoyed.

He didn’t have enough information about Ino’s mother. Ino’s mother tended to make herself scarce, only showing up to events when needed to. Shikamaru could barely picture her face, muddled by Ino and her father’s. His father never talked about her the same way he discussed Choji’s mother. She wasn’t off-limits, per say, but Ino’s father never brought her up and no one asked about her. It was something that she was doing to Ino that caused that awkwardness. He supposed he could ask his father what was going on with Ino, but it would be strange to suddenly ask about her so long, and they were never close to begin with. 

Ino and Shikamaru weren’t close for many reasons. She had a weak body growing up, so she didn’t really leave her house. They were in the same academy class, but had different friend groups and eventually she left that class too. Now, she wasn’t even assigned to their genin team like he and Choji thought she was going to be. He didn’t even know who her jounin teacher was or what kind of training she was doing. All he can remember is her splotchy skin, clammy hands, loud voice, and bright grin. 

“How difficult.” He mutters to no one in particular. He closes his eyes and drifts into dreams about flowery dresses and sunshine.


	6. Chapter 6

‘Ino made chunin,’ Tsubaki thought, ‘much quicker than I expected.’ She writes down the day the Ino advanced in rank and the circumstances surrounding her promotion. ‘She isn’t finished yet. I need more time to perfect her.’ She finishes her journal entry.

Tsubaki closes the journal and puts it on her shelf among other books, mostly poison or medical related. She sighs, picking up what she was doing before Inoichi burst into her workshop bearing Ino’s news. Ino was running out of her specially formulated face cream and Tsubaki was sure that she’d need more nightshade oil to mix in with her food. Tsubaki ground up some rosary pea seeds into a fine powder before carefully mixing it in with shea butter, beeswax, and an assortment of oils.

If things go according to her predictions, Ino should be sweating poison soon, something Tsubaki cannot wait to study. In about a year, she would be a living, breathing poisonous flower. Ino no longer had physical reactions to poison, and just standing next to her caused discomfort for most people. She wasn’t deadly enough _yet_. Tsubaki grinned. She scooped the noxious concoction out of the mixing bowl and into an empty cosmetic pot, screwing the lid on it when full. Satisfied with her work, she went into her house, up the stairs, and set it on Ino’s vanity. Inoichi called for her downstairs.

“Honey! You got a scroll!” He yelled.

Tsubaki rubbed her temples before going to see her husband.

“T&I needs more supplies, probably.” She complains when he handed her her mail. “Ibiki needs to learn the art of being frugal with what he has. It takes time and effort to make torturing poisons!”

“Maybe, you should finally think about getting a student. As much as we’d both love Ino to take over both our positions, her _abilities_ are going to be used in other fields.” Inoichi puts emphasis on abilities, sorting through their other letters.

Tsubaki sits next to her husband on their couch, leaning on him. “I’m sure the Hokage can’t wait to stick her in Anbu.”

He tosses the mail on the coffee table with a sigh. “Yeah, that or Ibiki has a mind to stick in T&I. She’s already working with Anko.”

“And Anko is shaping her to be a perfect little Anbu soldier.” 

“Once Ino gets out of the hospital, I'm assuming Anko plans to have her summon the snakes. Fitting, I guess, but what a high risk for a 13 year old girl.” Inoichi rubs his face. “Yeah, we should’ve expected that from the start. But, Jesus, I hope she doesn’t get eaten alive. We know who else has a contract with them.”

Tsubaki laughs, smacking her husband’s shoulder. “Sweetie, the snake that’s stupid enough to eat our daughter is as good as dead. There's no way he’d survive our little poison princess.”


End file.
